By Mae Lee Sun, Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, May 08, 2009

Back in the day, Eric May, now director of stadium operations for the Tucson Toros, was amazed at how much trash was left behind after every baseball game. There were plastic bottles, aluminum cans, cardboard and cups that all got tossed into dumpsters and taken to the landfill to be buried. May, who has worked the baseball scene for the Toros, Tucson Sidewinders and the Arizona Diamondbacks, says he wants all that to change. He has made it both a personal and professional initiative to turn the Toros operations green.

Photo by Mae Lee Sun Eric May, director of stadium operations for the Tucson Toros has dedicated his time to greening the Toros operation both inside the offices and Hi Corbett field with the help of the City of Tucson and Tucson Clean and Beautiful.

“We are a throwaway society and I’ve been aware of this ever since I was a kid. It always bothered me, so in my personal life I’ve made it a point to be conscious of what I’m doing to not create unnecessary trash. So when I became facilities manager at Tucson Electric Park, which was prior to the Toros coming back, I tried to implement a recycling program. I tried for three years to no avail and was told it was too costly, took too much labor, too much time and there were too many perceived barriers to get a recycling program going. The push for green wasn’t there like it is now. In coming over to the Toros operation this year, I decided it was that important that I was going to ram it through no matter what anyone else thought. Because the timing was right, we’ve now got the City of Tucson and Tucson Clean and Beautiful on board,” he says.